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THAILAND: New Premier Starts on Populist Note

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jan 30 2008 (IPS) - Thailand’s new prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, chose an apt location to set the tone for his leadership style hours after winning the backing of 310 legislators in the 480-member lower house this week. He went shopping for vegetables at a popular market that sells fresh local produce.

The image of the country’s 25th prime minister, clad in a white, long-sleeved shirt and black tie, reaching out to pick ginger from a stall was not aimed to project himself as a man-of-the-people style of politician.

Rather, it was Samak’s message to Thais that he is not going to let such a small business as heading a coalition government in this southeast Asian nation come in the way of one of his passions: cooking.

The 72-year-old is not just a man who churns up a dish or two in the comfort of his kitchen in his Bangkok home. Samak, in fact, is a celebrity chef who has been a regular fixture for years on a local TV station, where he prepares Thai dishes on a show that is also peppered with his rants on political issues of the day. This show, which has devoted fans in the Thai capital and elsewhere, is called ”Tasting and Complaining”.

Samak’s fans, furthermore, have been promised that the show will go on. ”The constitution does not forbid the prime minister from talking about food,” he was quoted as having said in Tuesday’s ‘Bangkok Post’ newspaper. Such an assurance that the celebrity chef, wearing his new hat, will soon be back confirms his attempts to be seen as his own man.

But such a quest to appear independent in his own inimitable style may not be easy for Samak. The local media have already mounted a campaign to paint him as a puppet for the real force behind the People Power Party (PPP), which Samak led to victory in the Dec. 23 parliamentary elections. The puppet-master, say Thai media pundits, is former prime minster Thaksin Shinawatra, who was turfed out of office by the military in a September 2006 coup.

”Talk of the deposed prime minister having a political role in the new government cannot be easily dismissed, since there are strong links between the new administration and Thaksin,” says Thanet Aphornsuvan, associate professor of history at Bangkok’s Thammasat University. ”It adds a new dimension to Thai politics. We have never had a situation like this before.”

This view emerged during the campaign for the December parliamentary elections, when the PPP openly confirmed its links with Thaksin and his Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai – TRT) party, Thanet added in an interview. ”This is why the media are labeling the PPP and Samak as a proxy or nominee of Thaksin.”

Thaksin, a billionaire telecom tycoon before being elected as the country’s leader in 2001, has been living in exile since his ouster in Thailand’s 18th coup. In mid-2007, a special tribunal appointed by the military regime ruled against the TRT for violating election laws during a 2006 poll. The party was disbanded and Thaksin and 110 TRT leaders have been prevented from participating in politics for five years.

At the time, Samak was considered a political has-been, an image reinforced by his career as a chef on TV. He had a mixed political record that spanned over three decades by then. In the mid-1970s he had earned notoriety for being a belligerent champion of extreme right-wing nationalistic views. His conservative crusades were linked to a brutal crackdown of left-wing students and activists in 1976, where over 40 people were killed.

During Samak’s spell as interior minister, soon after, he announced a ban on some 100 books that were sympathetic to left-wing and progressive political causes. He was also identified as a key figure behind a campaign broadcast through state-owned radio stations to vilify Vietnamese living in Thailand, for their communist leanings.

He subsequently formed his own political party, a common feature in Thai politics, and served in two governments in the 1980s and the early 1990s as transport minister. Bangkokians felt his abrasive style of politics from 2000 to 2003, after he was swept to power with an unprecedented majority at a poll for the mayor’s post.

It was during this term as mayor that Samak launched his TV cooking programme, a feature that did not go down well with many of the capital’s residents. He was accused by some of spending more time with his culinary passion than addressing the city’s major woes, such as its intractable traffic problems.

By the time he left the mayor’s office, there was little prospect of Samak being a future prime minister. The TRT government had emerged as a formidable political force and was riding an increasing wave of popularity. Thaksin had led his party to an impressive victory in a 2001 poll and then improved on that record with a thumping parliamentary majority in the 2005 elections.

But the September 2006 coup, which came on the heels of mass public protests in Bangkok against the Thaksin administration’s alleged corrupt deals and abuse of power, put a halt to the prevailing political calculations. And the subsequent announcement by the junta to hold elections in December 2007 opened the way for Samak to make one final bid for the most powerful political office in the country.

The revival of this political dinosaur’s fortunes was shaped by Thaksin, who backed his candidacy as leader of the PPP for last year’s elections and then endorsed his name as the party’s choice for prime minster.

”Thaksin believed only a veteran politician like Samak could save his sinking ship,” wrote Weerayut Chokchaimadon in Tuesday’s edition of ‘The Nation’ newspaper. ‘’Samak proved himself to be the right choice – the PPP only grew stronger as the race of the House neared its end.”

On late Tuesday evening, after Samak’s appointment was endorsed by Thailand’s king, the new prime minister put aside his customary combative style of speaking for a more conciliatory tone. ”I have become the government leader while the country is in trouble. I beg all of you to support my coalition government,” he said during a ceremony at his house.